Zeltweg – The Austrian Grand Prix

11th August 1979

The sixth race in the Procar series took place in Zeltweg and was staged over 17 laps at 5.942 km each. The winner mastered the race distance of 101.014 km at an average speed of 184.82 km/h.

Jacques Laffite confidently won his first Procar race at the Österreichring, stopping Niki Lauda’s winning streak; whilst Clay Regazzoni was given hope of winning the coveted the BMW M1, due to Niki Lauda dropping out. Markus Hötting proved himself as the best private driver, finishing in 2nd place, whilst Marc Surer attracted some attention for his impressive race to catch up.

Already in the 3rd lap, Frenchman – Jacques Laffite – stole the lead from Australian – Alan Jones – subsequently keeping the grid in check.

Jones dropped out due to engine trouble. Lauda too withdrew, due to clutch failure. Behind Laffite followed a lot of suspense. The protagonists included Höttinger, Regazzoni, Stuck, Pironi and Bürger, who once again was able to drive Lauda’s factory M1. All continuously changing positions. Eventually, Höttinger was able to free himself from this group and finished in 2nd place, whilst Regazzoni and Pironi jostled until the final laps for 3rd place. Only when the Swissman announced gear problems, was Pironi able to overtake. Once again, the star of Hockenheim, Hans-Georg Bürger amazingly battled his way to the finish line, in 6th place directly behind Manfred Winkelhock. In 7th place and with an ailing engine, Stuck was dissatisfied. Due to a burst engine during practice, Jochen Mass was not even able to compete.

Das Rennergebnis

Zeltweg – The Austrian Grand Prix

BMW works cars in BMW M design
Blue text = F1 driver – Red time = F1 driver

Pos.	#	Name	Nat.	Team	Laps	Time	T-Time
1	26	Jacques Laffite	F	BMW Motorsport	17	32:47,75	1:35,92
2	44	Markus Höttinger	A	Dr.Helmut Marko	17	32:53,19	1:54,02
3	3	Didier Pironi	F	BMW Motorsport	17	32:56,87	1:36,98
4	28	Clay Regazzoni	CH	BMW Motorsport	17	32:59,93	1:36,84
5	81	Manfred Winkelhock	D	Winkelhock Racing	17	32:63,33	1:55,09
6	90	Hans-Georg Bürger	D	BMW Motorsport	17	32:63,80	1:54,28
7	77	Hans-Joachim Stuck	D	Cassani Racing	17	32:72,06	1:53,54
8	71	Marc Surer	CH	BMW Schweiz	17	32:83,03	1:54,80
9	70	Bruno Giacomelli	I	BMW Italia	17	32:87,35	1:55,68
10	99	Toine Hezemans	NL	BMW Nederland	17	32:90,71	1:55,72
11	50	Dieter Quester	A	Tom Walkinshaw	17	32:91,34	1:56,16
12	66	Helmut Kelleners	D	Eggenberger	17	33:03,25	19.
13	45	Sepp Manhalter	A	Schnitzer	17	33:63,97	18.
14	61	Walter Brun	CH	Schnitzer / Brun	17	33:75,72	17.
	5	Niki Lauda	A	Project FourRacing		dit not finish	1:36,72
	27	Alan Jones	AUS	BMW Motorsport		dit not finish	1:34,30
	88	Franz Konrad	A	Konrad Racing		dit not finish	16.
	41	Wolfgang Schütz	D	Schütz Racing		dit not finish	1:56,33
	55	Jochen Mass	D	Team Krebs		dit not start	1:55,05